South Africa’s drug nightmare
IN ONE of several multimillion-rand drug busts in the country last week, a mandrax laboratory in the Ekurhuleni town of Nigel illustrates the magnitude of the drug problem we face.
Police, responding to an arson complaint at a disused church building on a smallholding, found the chemicals used to manufacture the drug. Three suspects were arrested and chemicals worth up to R30 million were confiscated.
It is a fact that drugs are a major driver of our soaring crime rate, particularly among the poor and unemployed.
Previous figures the police have published show that drug abuse accounts for 60 percent of all crimes.
According to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, which among others provides counselling services to addicts, illegal drug use in South Africa is double the world norm.
Some of the widely available and abused drugs include heroin, dagga, methamphetamines and cocaine.
Another increasingly popular drug is nyaope – a highly addictive cocktail of marijuana, heroin, rat poison and other bizarre additives. This has become a drug of choice for young drug users because it’s cheap and easily accessible.
South Africa, the largest illegal drug market in sub-Saharan Africa, is an attractive market for drug traffickers.
Widespread and severe poverty levels, rapid urbanisation, a decline of traditional and social relationships and porous borders are excellent conditions for this problem to fester.
Our expanding trade links with other parts of the world, such as Asia, Europe and the Americas, are a magnet to traffickers.
While authorities regularly catch drug smugglers at ports of entry, this capacity must be expanded. Internally, intelligence should be ramped up to make it tougher for criminal rings.
The community must also play its part in informing on suspects. To overcome this foe it must be all hands on deck. The state is currently probing the legalisation of “medicinal” dagga, at the request of the now late MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini.
Unable to continue taking the pain as a terminal lung cancer sufferer, he played Verdi’s at dawn last August 16 in Hout Bay, took a gun and ended his suffering.
This must never be allowed to happen again.